Religion and Society in America
Week 6 – Lecture 3
“Antislavery Reform, Secession, and Societal
Divides” – Part II
Antislavery Reform, Secession,
and Societal Divides
• “Unity” Among Protestant Evangelicals
• Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
– Centrifugal forces turned Centripetal
• Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
– An example of proslavery arguments
• War and the Kingdom of God
“Unity” Among Protestant
Evangelicals
• Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians among
other Protestant denominations all
recognized the unity of the “universal”
Church that transcended the apparent
disunity of denominations
• Belief or identity of “the Church” for 19th
Century Americans rooted in shared
experience
“Unity” Among Protestant
Evangelicals
• “Catholic” derived from Greek word
katholikos meaning “universal”
• Acts1:6 – 8 “So when they had come
together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the
time when you will restore the kingdom of
Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to
know the times or periods that the Father
has set by his own authority…
“Unity” Among Protestant
Evangelicals
• …But you will receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and
Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
• Acts 11:15 - 18 “And as I began to speak the
Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us
at the beginning. And I remembered how the
word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John
baptized with water, but you will be baptized with
the Holy Spirit…
“Unity” Among Protestant
Evangelicals
• If then God gave them the same gift that he
gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus
Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’
When they heard this, they were silenced. And
they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given
even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to
life.”
• Acts 11:26b “So it was that for an entire year
they met with the church and taught a great
many people and it was in Antioch that the
disciples were first called ‘Christians.’”
“Unity” Among Protestant
Evangelicals
• Bedrock foundation of belief came in
widespread belief that the American
experience originated in providential
design
• Each denomination understood as
constituting a different “mode” of
expressing the outward forms of worship
and organization of the Church
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
•
•
•
•
•
Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces:
Voluntary Societies
Popular Persuasion
“Heartfelt Religion”
Antislavery
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Voluntary Societies: Three Functions in
the Republic and Antebellum
– Made turbulent democratic element into
respectable citizens
– Pursue benevolent reform objectives in
society without involving centralized power
– Provided identity and national unity
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Success of these activities carried forward
on the principle of free association
provided a major dimension of cultural
cohesion in antebellum society
• It has been argued, “simply as a system of
social organization the evangelical
coalition helped to expand American
consciousness from localism to
nationalism”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Given these factors, the question remains
how did evangelicalism help to splinter the
nation?
• By embracing more and more of the
grassroots populace on the principle of
popular persuasion, denominations were
unwittingly jeopardizing their ability to
function as disciplined communities of faith
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Winthrop Hudson, Religion in America –
“Three emphases stimulated by revivalistic
preaching would seem to have been of
decisive importance in creating the climate
of enthusiasm out of which new cults,
sects, and communities emerged…”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Revivalist demand for an immediate
confrontation with God
• This demand often took the form or was
expressed in ecstatic visions or mystical
illumination
• Such experiences, in America’s loosely
structured democratic society, could be
interpreted as new revelation (e.g.
Mormons)
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Increased stress on the possibility of
perfect sanctification among individuals,
not necessarily communities
• This aroused the desire or goal of holiness
or a life free from sin
• Sanctification = “making holy” or
“consecrating” – what is sanctified is
removed from what is profane
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Exod.19:22-24 – “Even the priests who
approach the Lord must consecrate
themselves or the Lord will break out
against them…”
• Lev.22:31-32 – “Thus you shall keep my
commandments and observe them…that I
may be sanctified among the people of
Israel…”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Matt. 5:48 – “Be perfect, therefore, as your
heavenly Father is perfect.”
• 2 Thess. 2:13 “…God chose you as the
first fruits for salvation through
sanctification by the Spirit and through
belief in the truth.”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Irony of Evangelical history in antebellum period
– Sermon on the Mount and the “Beatitudes”
• Matt. 5:43 – “You have heard that it was said,
‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you…”
• Matt.6:1 – “Beware of practicing your piety
before others in order to be seen by them; for
then you have no reward from your Father in
heaven.”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Finally, the tendency of evangelicals to
dwell on ancient millennial expectations of
a golden age to come, was rooted in the
belief that its inauguration was to be
brought about by the individual in faith
coming to Jesus or through the
proclamation of the Gospel
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
5536
6000
4495
5000
4000
3000
1423
2000
762
1000
0
1850: Churches in the South forming the
Confederacy
Other
Methodist
Baptist
Presbyterian
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
45.3
36.8
11.7
6.2
1850: Percentage of Churches forming the
Confederacy
Other
Methodist
Baptist
Presbyterian
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Antislavery and abolitionist vanguard
based its attack on slavery specifically on
the moral and religious values
• Southern defense must be based on these
arguments
• An example of Southern pro-slavery
arguments: Reverend George Armstrong
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• George Armstrong’s The Christian Doctrine of
Slavery (1857)
• Norfolk, Virginia
• Final chapter of work, “God’s Work in God’s
Way” offered opened by describing slaves as
“deeply degraded”
• He related this “anthropological argument” with
the assertion, “In the case of a race of men in
slavery, the work which God has appointed his
Church…is to labor to secure in them a Christian
life on earth and meetness for his heavenly
kingdom.”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• “And the commission of the Church, ‘go ye
into all the world and preach the Gospel to
every creature,’ sends her a messenger of
glad tidings to him as truly as to men for
above him in the scale of civilization.”
• Metaphorical interpretation of Galatians
passage in Jesus “there is neither bond
nor free” closely allied to sacrament of
Lord’s Supper
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Armstrong went on to argue “slavery” as
an institution was essentially the same
world wide and throughout history
• Corrective to those such as Albert Barnes
who sought to assert a distinguish
between Jewish, Roman, and American
slavery
• Suggested the apostle Paul never directly
argued against slavery
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Denominational schisms erupt as the
nation and its churches are debating the
issue of slavery
• Important to see how issues surrounding
the ethics or morality of slavery were
debated in terms of church governance
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• 1837 – Presbyterian Church divides along
theological lines over issues ostensibly related
to missions
• “New School” and “Old School”
• New School interested in promoting “new
measures” of revivalism. Adherents also tend to
be those espousing antislavery
• Most of the South becomes Old School
Presbyterians and consequently staunch
defenders of the Confederacy
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• 1837 – William S. Plumer at a pre-Assembly
caucus cautions “Should the
Assembly…legislate and decide that
slaveholding is a sin…the Southern churches
would all feel themselves instructed by the
Apostle Paul to ‘withdraw from such’ [1Tim. 6:5]
• Internal divisions over the issue of slavery
persist between Old and New Schools until 1861
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• “The question is not between the new and
the old school—is not in relation to
doctrinal errors; but it is slavery and
antislavery. It is not the [doctrinal]
standards which were protected, but the
system of slavery.” Cincinnati Journal and
Luminary (1837)
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• After the war, Lyman Beecher suggested
the Old School, “Got scared about
abolition…John C. Calhoun was at the
bottom of it. I know of his doing things—
writing ministers, and telling them to do
this and do that. The South finally took the
Old School side. It was a cruel thing—it
was an accursed thing, and ‘twas slavery
that did it.”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• 1836 General Assembly it is rumored there
are 150 abolitionists on the floor of the
assembly
• Fears were unfounded
• Following year, Old School North and
South agree to thwart any petition by New
School Synods concerning issues of
slavery
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Methodists and “The Plan of Separation”
• 1836 – General Conference meeting in
Cincinnati rejects proposals for any new
legislation on the matter of slavery and declares
the delegates were “decidedly opposed to
modern abolitionism, and wholly disclaimed any
right, wish or intentions to interfere in the civil
and political relation between master and slave
as it exists in the slave-holding states of this
Union.”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• “In the present state of the country we
believe it to be of the utmost importance to
the country itself, that the churches be
kept together. Let the bonds be once
severed which hold the churches of the
North and South together, and the Union
of these states will be more than
endangered, it will presently be rent
asunder.” Southern Christian Advocate
(1837)
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• May 1, 1844 – New York City, last General
Conference of an undivided Methodist
Church
• Moral issue of slavery debated through
church polity or procedural matters of
carrying out the church’s business
• The case of Bishop Andrew
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• James O. Andrew, Georgia
• 1832 elected to episcopacy
• In a will, Andrew was bequeathed a slave by a
deceased family member
• Argues to Conference Committee that he is an
“unwilling trustee” of a slave, who refused to
migrate to a free state with her young child
• Methodist Discipline allowed ministers to own
slaves in states were the law specifically forbade
manumission
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Georgia state law prohibited manumission
• Antislavery Methodists in North beg issue
by raising questions concerning the nature
of the episcopacy
• Argued, bishops, as superintendent’s for
the entire church, must represent their
constituency on matters of morality
• Northerners propose limiting Andrew’s
bishopric to the South
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Southern Methodist vehemently oppose
this option
• In a resolution adopted 110 to 68, it was
argued Bishop Andrew’s “connection” with
slavery “will greatly embarrass the
exercise of his office…if not in some
places entirely prevent it.”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• Southern delegation makes immediate
preparation to withdraw from the Church and
form the Methodist Episcopal Church, South
• Elias Bowen, a representative of the Oneida
Conference, replied to measures by stating, “We
deprecate the idea of division, sir. We know that
our great republic is connected together by the
twofold ties of civil and ecclesiastical union.”
Rupturing the Benevolent Empire
• “The prospect for peace and amicable
relations, is infinitely better with a
separation than under a forced and
nominal union. And if so, the safety of the
country is to a much greater extent bound
up with a division of the church, than a
continued union.” Southern Christian
Advocate 1844
War and the Kingdom of God
• “The stability of free institutions is
dependent upon the restraints which are
thrown around them. But ‘the irrepressible
conflict,’ which has recently been
inaugurated is fast breaking down these
restraints,” the Christian Observer
commented in the fall of 1860
War and the Kingdom of God
• The New York Freeman’s Journal which
proclaimed in December, 1860, “this unholy and
fratricidal war began with your hard-shell
Reformed Presbyterians, and your soft-shell
new-school Presbyterians, and with your
Baptists, Methodists, and such like.” Taking
Benevolent Empire to task, the article asserted,
“you, Protestant religionists were the very first to
begin this game of disunion…to meddle with
other people’s business, and impose its notions,
and its will, on people who do not freely accept
them.”
War and the Kingdom of God
• Addressing departing soldiers from Exeter,
New Hampshire, Reverend Elias Nason
suggested the “warlike temper” of
Southerners was like a “loud mouthed
cannon [had] opened on our fortresses”
challenging the North’s trust in “the
invisible and adorable God!”
War and the Kingdom of God
• In 1861, Northern Catholics were told “the
true way to regard this war is to regard it
as a chastisement from the hand of Divine
Providence, as a just judgment from God
upon our nation for its manifold sins.”
Such a judgment, it was suggested, was
“designed not to destroy us, but to purify
and save us.”